


The Knot

by hammockandhoney (twinpines)



Category: North and South - Ambiguous Fandom, North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell | UK TV
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hands!, and some good old fashioned longing, family fic, fred is home, should i tag this as cross dressing?, the possibility of danger is really sexy i guess, then there's a train station incident, we love a bit of cross dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:16:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25143010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinpines/pseuds/hammockandhoney
Summary: North and South vignettes, from my daydreams and imaginings.
Relationships: Margaret Hale/John Thornton
Comments: 12
Kudos: 94





	1. The Knot

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to showcase the playfulness I always believed existed (and wish we had gotten to see) among the members of the Hale family. And, Mr. Thornton finds he doesn’t mind Margaret in a cravat. No, he doesn’t mind at all.

Margaret ran, laughing and stumbling, out of her mother’s room and across the hall into her father’s study. Fred trailed close behind, hollering. Margaret could hear her mother’s faint chuckles from the bedroom—a joyful sound in its rarity. She thought she might feel tears fill her eyes if it wasn’t for her happiness. 

Fred tumbled in the room after her, turning her about and holding her softly by the shoulders. He put on a serious face. “If we are to play, you absolutely must dress the part. Mother wouldn’t have it any other way, I’m sure.” A cry of agreement rang out from Maria Hale, swathed in her bed linens. 

Margaret began to protest—“I’m much too old!”—but Fred’s rollicking laughter, his shouts, filled the whole room with their presence, and she was unequipped, useless in the face of it. For a moment, she could not remember her face before this smile was etched upon it. 

She let herself be dragged to Fred’s room, watched while he unearthed a crisp pile of vêtements from the recesses of his suitcase. 

“M’lady.” He bowed, presenting them to her. “I expect you back shortly. If you need help, yell!”

In the privacy of her room Margaret shucked off her heavy linen gown, fumbled at the small of her back with the laces of her corset. It was flung to the ground in her relief to be rid of it. “If I need help…hah! As if it would be any more difficult to put on men’s clothes than it is to put on my own.”

But Margaret did have trouble with the cravat. 

Fred took a long time tying it for her, insisting that she must be truly presentable. Mother wouldn’t have it otherwise. Margaret rolled her eyes, to Fred’s amusement. She truly couldn’t remember the last time she had done so. There were many things she had not done since Fred had gone. 

Margaret put those thoughts aside for the moment and pulled Fred into her mother’s room. She heard the click of the door downstairs and knew it must be Dixon coming in from the market. Maria sat up, clapping her hands together quietly at the sight of her two children. “Splendid, splendid! It’s almost as if we were back in Helstone. I can but smell the roses. Now, which of you is the pirate?”

“Clearly, I,” Fred laughed. 

“Are you so sure? Could I not myself be a pirate?”

“You have not the stomach for it, dear sister,” Fred teased. 

At that, Margaret snatched the handkerchief—their “treasure,” for lack of any better booty—and ran from the room, to the delighted laughter of their mother from her bed. 

Fred was unprepared, and Margaret was quick. She always had been, and Fred had forgotten. 

Margaret darted downstairs, unable to hold back her laughter, pushing her weight against the walls of the stairwell to keep from falling over as Fred fumbled behind her with “You can’t escape me for long!” and, “You forget, I always did win this game!”

They ran to the kitchen, breathless in laughter, where Dixon spluttered at their raucousness. But they hadn’t the time for it. Margaret, with the freedom her new garments allowed her, darted from corner to corner, laughing over Dixon’s attempts to reason with them. The two of them were fueled by their mother’s laughter, her praise, the light that had come into her eyes for the first time in months. Fred had not been here, but he knew, too, that his mother had been away from herself. That this, for her, was almost as good as going back. 

Margaret skirted around Fred’s falling form, dashed through the kitchen door again and pushed into the drawing room, back first.

“You have caught yourself in a corner, ye pirate!” Fred called.

Margaret laughed and hid the hanky behind herself, stumbling backwards. 

“Margaret! What on earth!” Her father’s shocked tones startled Margaret for only a moment, but she knew he would not mind her state of dress when she told him why she had donned such an outfit. She made to turn around to tell him, forgetting the “prize” she held clutched to her back. 

As Margaret’s sure smile faded into a look of pure shock and abject embarrassment, Fred, hearing only his father’s tones, launched himself into the drawing room, tackling his sister around the back and wrenching the “flag” from her willing hand, crying out in triumph. “Mother! I—oh.”

Fred and Margaret both froze on the floor of the drawing room, looking up into the face of a very taken aback, very disconcerted Mr. Thornton. 

“John, I apologize, my—I do not know what has come over… Margaret, what on earth are you two doing?”

Margaret was sure her face had never been more red in her life. She was speechless. She went to brush the fallen hair from her eyes and the movement reminded her of the clothes she was in—the thick wool breeches, the white cotton tucked in shirt, Fred’s too-big waistcoat and jacket, the silk cravat tied too tightly around her slender neck. She did not even attempt to speak.

“It’s my fault—I asked her to dress up like this. We mean nothing by it—“

Mr. Hale looked at his son with a deep frown. “Your mother is ill, what could you possibly mean in—“

Margaret interrupted. “It made her happy, Father. She asked us to play one of the old games, like we did as children, in Helstone.”

If Margaret believed that Fred was her mother’s favorite, then it was sure that she was her father’s. Even Mr. Thornton, as he glanced over—only just wrenching his gaze away from the sight of Margaret’s legs in trousers, her long braided hair brushing against her jacket—to his tutor’s cross visage, noticed the change come over Mr. Hale’s eyes and brow at Margaret’s plaintive tones. He softened, almost smiled. 

“Ah, yes, I remember. Well, John, these are my children for you,” Mr. Hale laughed derisively, but lovingly. 

When Mr. Thornton had regained his ability to speak, he said, “Your children? I did not know you had more than one child.”

Fred decided to speak up at this. It did not escape his notice that his sister and this “John” fellow had locked eyes from the moment they met, and that the man had taken it upon himself to inspect nearly every inch of Margaret’s person. He would have been angry if it weren’t for the look on his sister’s face, the careful study she did of his profile when he was distracted, as if to make sure she could not discern some emotion she was afraid of seeing there.

“Ah, but I am the prodigal son returned, sir. Frederick Hale, at your service.” In an attempt to lighten the mood of the room, Fred did a mock bow. Margaret pinched him on the bicep. 

“It is a long and rather unhappy story,” Fred continued, “And one you will not be able to repeat at parties, and the like.” He spoke carefully.

“We can trust John, he is a dear friend.” Mr. Hale spoke assuredly, then lowered his glasses in his daughter’s direction. “In the meantime, why don’t you two get dressed.” 

Margaret blushed again, bowed her head, and went from the room, pulling Fred with her. 

“Well, a game of pirate never ended like that before, did it?” Fred said. Margaret scowled at him. 

“Can we trust him?” Now Fred was serious, his large eyes turned hopefully on his sister. 

“I believe so. I want to believe so.” She paused. “Perhaps I can talk to him, after father..”

“Yes, I believe he will listen to almost anything you have to say,” Fred joked. 

“What on earth do you mean by that?”  
“Only just that he might’ve taken up the old traitor’s flag if it meant he got to share ship with you.” Fred dangled the hanky in Margaret’s face, then dashed off to their mother’s room. Margaret passed by the door, saw him sitting near their mother’s head, brushing the gray curls off her sleeping face. 

She pondered on Fred’s comment as she began to untie her boot laces. 

She had been embarrassed before Mr. Thornton before, but never like this. Of course it was just a harmless game, a farce from their raucous childhood, but he did not know that. What would he think of her? How could he still believe her to be a lady after he had seen her so? Margaret buried her head into her hands and stayed there, leaning off the edge of her bed, for many long moments. 

He did not seem angry, though, she thought. Only shocked. Then contemplative. Then avoidant of her eyes. 

Having ridded herself of the boots, she began working at the knot of the cravat, quickly finding it impossible. She went to the mirror, even, studied the black knot in its reflection, and soon began to curse Fred. She could not loosen it, not with the tip of her nail nor the pad of her fingers. 

She was loath to disturb the precious few moments between Fred and her mother, so in a huff, she began downstairs, sure that Mr. Thornton must be gone by now. Father would not want to keep him in a house that hosted a wanted man as its guest.

With a heavy, annoyed trod she made her way downstairs, calling out as she reached the bottom. “I never knew that cravats were so devilish! I do believe I’ve had a harder time with this than I ever have with my—“ 

Margaret fell silent at the sight of who was at the foot of the stairs. 

Mr. Thornton was staring at Margaret’s bare feet. He did not ever expect to see the sight. She hastened to curl her feet into one another, standing one foot atop the other, as if she could will her shoes, dress, and petticoats out of thin air.

“Mr. Thornton, I… I am most embarrassed. I assure you I do not take to dressing in men’s clothes often—it was only a game, you see, one my brother and I used to play as children. And my mother seemed happy, so we..” She trailed off as she saw Mr. Thornton was barely listening, staring at her throat. 

He cleared his own throat, darted his eyes up to meet hers, then back down. “You were having trouble with your cravat, Miss Hale?” 

“Yes, I… I cannot loosen the knot. I believe Fred is playing a cruel joke on me—he tied it.”

John found he could not help himself. Propriety, manners, sense—they all told him to bid Miss Hale good day, turn around, and finish seeing himself out as he had told Richard he would do. But instinct, desire, and passion propelled him forward, toward the source of his love, his longing. 

“I’d like to help you, if I may.”

Margaret could only nod. 

His hands, seemingly of their own free will, raised slowly towards Margaret’s smooth throat. The cravat was so stark against her skin, but the texture of the silk seemed harsh and unyielding against the petal-softness there. 

John identified the place where the knot had become tucked into another fold of the necktie. He was surprised he could think about knots. He was surprised he could think at all. 

Margaret’s neck was the softest thing he had ever felt, softer than freshly spun cotton, softer than the blossoms of wildflowers, softer than the well-worn gauzy pages of his family’s bible. He felt her fast breath on his knuckles. He dare not look upon her face. 

Margaret, for her part, was beside herself. Had he ever been this close to her? Did she want him to be? Had she not rejected him most cruelly only weeks ago? 

She could not think. She was only aware of the barely-present brush of his calloused fingers against her neck, the way his gaze wavered longingly between her throat and the tie, the way he licked his thin lips as his long fingers wrestled with the unforgiving knot. 

Finally, Margaret felt the slight restriction at her throat ease. Then, the smooth pull of silk under her ear. Mr. Thornton slowly pulled the cravat away from her person, winding it about his other hand. 

“I think you best stick to what you know, Miss Hale, unless you wish to be further inconvenienced.” 

She looked up, ready to call upon her fast-rising irateness, when she saw that he was teasing her. 

She softened. 

“I’m sure, Mr. Thornton, that I could not take on such a manner of dress if I did not have someone ready by to untangle me from such mishaps. Not to mention the fact that I am already gawked at enough here in Milton—I need not don a gentleman’s garb to encourage it.”

Mr. Thornton frowned at this. “You do not find yourself to be welcome here in Milton?”  
Margaret smiled. “I confess I do feel a fish out of water at times, but it has grown on me. And my friends tell me I have grown on it.”

He paused for a moment. “You surely have, Miss Hale.” 

“Margaret.”

He was taken aback for a second—perhaps a third—time that day.

“I only mean… you have seen me in my brother’s clothes, Mr. Thornton. You know my family’s greatest secret. Surely you may call me by my given name.” There was a fear in Margaret’s voice, despite its surface pleasantness. 

John swallowed. “I would be honored… Margaret.

Never was there a sweeter sound, she thought, then quickly quashed it. 

“And you may be assured… no word of your brother’s presence here will escape my lips.” 

Margaret found herself speechless for the second time that day. She could only nod at Mr. Thornton in immense thanks, mortified at the tears she felt threatening the inner corners of her eyes. What had she ever done to deserve this man’s protection? She knew only that her father had found a very dear friend in John Thornton, and that she and her brother should be grateful for it. She blinked in quick succession to quell the emotion that brimmed in her. She did not know if he noticed, for he was staring at the buttons of her waistcoat. 

With a bow and a quick farewell, John hurried out of the house soon after, their stilted goodbyes seeming strange and formal after the closeness they had shared. Margaret could still feel the tips of his fingers on her skin long after he had gone. She smiled into her cup of the tea she brought upstairs for her family, thinking that she wouldn’t mind hearing Mr. Thornton use her name again, very soon. No, she wouldn’t mind at all.


	2. The Station

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John spends three hours in utter agony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate all of your comments on The Knot! I thought about continuing it, and I might still, but I had this little vignette in me first. I hope you enjoy. It's basically 1800 words of John Thornton suffering. (But don't worry, happy ending.)

Nicholas Higgins was out of breath. More out of breath than he could ever remember being—even more so than that time he and his boyhood friend had to run, careening, down the alleyway from his neighbor, whose loaf of bread had just been so enticing sitting in the window, the steam rising up from its crust, that they couldn’t help but use it to fill their squalling bellies. 

In truth, he didn’t even know why he was running so hard—getting the news to him faster wouldn’t make much difference. He’d still have to wait, like everyone else.

But something was pushing him to it. If it were him, he’d want to know. No matter the agony. And Nicholas himself thought he might be feeling something close to agony, and not just from the stitch cutting across his gut. He felt fear, and he didn’t like it. 

—

John had become lulled into complacency by the sound of his pen scratching against paper. Like a lullaby, it had dulled his senses, given him a quick draught sure to bring about the kind of ease of mind that sleep requires. But it was midday. And he had work to do. And he could not stop smiling.

Was it the pen, or was it her? The circumstance he found himself in—and had, to his utter surprise, each day upon waking for the last month—was one he dared not imagine for some months. One he had long since believed impossible. 

But possible it was. Possible she proved it to be, each day when she tucked her hand into the bend of his elbow, or asked him if he had eaten, or gazed at him in that way—that way of gazing he didn’t even know she was capable of until late—when she thought he wasn’t looking. When he met her eyes, she no longer averted her own, but looked right back at him with that same, sweet, loving look… John could die, he thought, right this moment, and be utterly full of joy that he had ever been given that one, blessed look. 

But no—the best was yet to come, he remembered, turning the ring on his finger a few times. His pen silent on the page for quite a while, an ink blot bubbling up beneath its tip, John decided he had to quit smiling alone in his office and get some real work done. After all, he had fewer distractions (at least, in the flesh) this past week, and ought to be keeping busy. 

Margaret was in London putting some affairs in order and collecting her things; she made her last few social calls with her aunt and cousin and attended to Mr. Bell’s properties in Oxford. She was set to return today on the afternoon train, and John was determined to get something done before she got back. In order to do so, he had to stop dwelling on her face—or really anything about her, like the first time he saw her laugh—really laugh—or the time she had accidentally bitten his lip while they were—

The sound of thudding up the stairs thrust him from his pleasant reverie. Straightening his back and flipping the page of his ledger so as to not display his blatant lack of work to his visitor, John put on the guise of business. Something, he thought, he never had to do until Margaret came along. 

He hastened in the visitor, who gave a single hard bang against the door, almost as if they’d slammed their body weight into it. 

Nicholas nearly fell in the office, his face red and his lips drawn. 

“What is it?” John immediately felt tense. His mind went to fire, illness, catastrophe—but no, let him speak first.  


“I’ve just been down to the station, sir, to see ‘bout the shipment of indigo you asked me to inquire after.”

“And? Surely you didn’t run all the way here to tell me they’d lost the order?”

Nicholas was silent for a moment, and this unnerved John more. “Speak, man!”

He removed his hat and fiddled with the brim. “I’ve just been down to the station—“

“Yes, you’ve said that.” John said, irritably. 

“And there’s news from near Stafford. Of a train—there’s been an accident.”

“And?” John felt his heart beat in his throat.

“And—well, sir, it’s Margaret’s train. It’s the train she’s meant to be on. ‘Parrently there was a collision. One train didn’t hear another coming, there was a curve, and—“

“Dear god.” John stood up from his desk, half leant over as if he was going to be sick. “You’re not saying…” He barely spoke. He could barely hear himself speak, the ringing in his ears was so loud. 

“The fella I talked to dinna have his information straight—dinna know much and I won’t be surprised if he were wrong about the whole thing—“

“Did you hear this from more than one person?”

“Yes, sir, the whole station was talkin’. But no one knows if any persons was hurt or—“

Nicholas’s voice was drowned by the din in his ears. The blood rushing to his head, the floor rushing to meet his eyes, the very earth seemed to be collapsing around him. This could not be happening. No, no, not this, not her. Not Margaret. Not like this—she was meant to go at a hundred-and-four—long after him, surrounded by their children, in a big white bed with the windows open and the birds calling from outside them. And John wouldn’t be there, he wouldn’t be there at all, to witness it. For he knew he couldn’t survive it. 

The next thing he felt was Nicholas’s broad hand on his arm, pulling him up. His voice was still merely a background buzzing. He made out Margaret’s name, and his mother’s, and the constable, and the station master, but struggled to make sense of how they were all related, or any of the words in between. 

“Up, up, master, come on, it’ll do ye no good to be slumped on the floor like this. Ye ought to go talk to Mrs. Thornton, and then we’ll go down to the station to ‘wait word.”

In the end it was Nicholas who did most of the talking to his mother, for he found he still could not string two words together. He felt his mother’s worried gaze on him all the way to the station—they took a carriage, since John’s legs were too wobbly for him to ride—and her arm on his, grounding him, trying to provide comfort that all the motherly love in the world could not conjure now. 

John stared straight ahead, into the black fabric of the coach’s interior, repeating to himself the mantra his mind had somehow gotten stuck on—it won’t be her. It won’t be her. And so on he repeated to himself, imagining the list of the dead handed to him, and her name no where to be found on it. It won’t be her. 

For three hours they waited. It was almost dark. Her train was meant to arrive two hours ago, and with each passing minute John felt himself sink further down into the pit his mind was creating for him. His own personal hell—this was. The concept of life without her. 

His mother had kept up a steady stream of reassurance and attempts at good humor for the first hour, and then abandoned that in favor of stolid silence. In contrast to John’s barely-concealed agony, Hannah Thornton was cold steel, awaiting whatever might come with the kind of acceptance of the truly terrible that can only come from having lived through such before. 

John was staring at the cobblestones when at last, from the distance where the early evening mist had already begun to hang about the ground, there came a shrill whistle. Nicholas, never having left their sides, ran over first. He caught the arm of someone in uniform, and when he didn’t get answers there, he began running to the conductor’s car all the way at the front of the train. John stood on trembling legs, his hands nearly blue in their unforgiving grip against one another. 

At last, passengers began to alight from the train. First, an elderly woman and her daughter, looking fine in their late-summer best. Then, two gentleman who clutched newspapers with their bags. The passengers filed out, some looking weary and harried, others looking on at them in pity, or offering condolences. He realized that some of the passengers must have been on the train that crashed, and the first seed of hope began to bloom in his chest. If they were here, putting feet down on cobble, heading home to their families and those who loved them, why not her? 

He and his mother continued to wait in agonized silence as the train emptied. There was a pause. She had not come out. 

John felt the air leave his lungs. But then—then—two women descended, accompanying a small child—a boy in a sailor hat who was crying. The mist and smoke obscured their faces but for a moment, but John thought he recognized the hem of the skirt of one of the ladies—and then, God, yes—Margaret. 

She turned to him almost as soon as he realized he had found her. Her eyes widened in both tearful agony and unadulterated joy, and before either of them felt their limbs move, they were in one another’s arms. 

John buried his face in her hair, first. He breathed her in. She, in turn, nuzzled into his throat, the collar of his shirt, her arms about him in a tight embrace. Then—he had to see her face. He pulled back, tucking her body into him, his arms about her shoulders and his palms against her soft, tear-streaked cheeks. “Margaret, my Margaret.” 

Her answer was a small sob. He was unsure whether she threw herself into his arms, or if he lifted her there, but he held her for a joyous moment, her feet in the air, her weight against him. He didn’t wish for it to be anywhere else. 

Their lips met in quick, frenzied kisses—like they couldn’t get enough of one another, couldn’t slow down for fear that the other might disappear. 

It was his mother clearing her throat that finally brought them both back to propriety.

“Might I suggest that you continue this reunion somewhere other than a public station? And hello Margaret, it is good to see you with us again.” 

John could have laughed aloud at his mother’s businesslike tone. But as it was, all he could do was run his hand from Margaret’s cheek down to her neck, and kiss her hands with his cold lips, and brush her waist as he helped her into the carriage, and hold her to him all the bumpy ride home. And when they were alone, finally, blessedly alone, he could tell her, again, in so many words—or none at all—that without her life was a meaningless void, and with her she brought the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I would love to know what you think if you are so inclined.


End file.
